In the wake of the stunning House defeat of the $700 billion economic rescue plan, the business community has launched an unprecedented lobbying blitz to polish the plan's public image and change some votes.

Since Monday, calls have gone out to local bankers, car dealers, CEOs, small businessmen and virtually every other type of lender and vendor, urging them to corner their local congressmen and tell them how the credit crunch is hurting them — not just some fat cats from Wall Street.

Lists of House members who opposed the package were scoured, traded and passed on. About 80 were identified as primary targets after being deemed potential vote switchers, one insider said.

The sense of urgency to win approval of the package is palpable. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced a hastily organized conference call with the White House, more than 300 participants jumped on, and more were trying when the operators were overwhelmed.

"When the vote went down, all hell broke loose," said Dirk Van Dongen, head of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.

"I haven't seen the business association community in this town mobilize so immediately and so massively and so pervasively in a long time," he added. "This is a Code Red."

As the Senate began debate on the rescue package, a letter supporting it was circulated to lawmakers from about 680 business and trade groups. Additionally, the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small businesses, informed members that the vote on the package would be a consideration when the group issues political endorsements and support.

The intensity of the activity is being fueled in part by the Republican leadership's failure to deliver enough votes to win passage in the House.

Appeals from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, GOP presidential nominee John McCain and House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) all failed, creating a void that the business community raced to fill.

Democrats are also coming under pressure to change their votes, and the business community has loosely aligned its work with important allies with better relationships on that side of the aisle.

AARP had activated its vast grass-roots network early last week. Since then, 40,000 members have sent about 110,000 e-mails to members of Congress, urging them to pass the bailout bill.

Nearly half of all equities are held by people aged 60 and older. And seniors have lost $1.2 trillion in the market in the past year, said David Sloan, AARP's senior vice president of government affairs.

"Those are the people who don't have the time to make up the losses in the same fashion as someone 30 years old," he added.

The normally feuding Democratic Governors Association and Republican Governors Association issued a joint letter urging passage that stated, "Americans across the country and in every demographic are feeling the pinch."

"If Congress does not act soon," the governors associations said, "the situation will grow appreciably worse."

Congressional leaders spent Wednesday adding some sweeteners to the package.

They agreed to boost the limit from $100,000 to $250,000 for federally insured bank balances to encourage small businesses and others to leave their money in community banks. And they tacked on some popular tax provisions and aid for rural schools to draw more support from Western lawmakers.

If a taxpayer-backed, revolving megafund is ultimately created to end the credit crunch, credit would go to both the lawmakers who cobbled the deal together and the extraordinary, spontaneous lobbying effort by those most desperate to see it become law.

Given the public's dislike of the package, their hurdle was high. And the business community's task was made even tougher by anti-tax groups earlier in the week that helped flood Capitol Hill with calls opposing the plan.

There wasn't time to create any sort of business war room. So the strategy was mapped out through a steady flow of conference calls and e-mails.

One key tactic that emerged was for the financial services industry to lower its profile. Main Street voices were chosen to take the lead.

"We realize that we're not the best messengers right now," said one financial services lobbyist.

John Castellani, head of the Business Roundtable, representing the nation's major corporations, held a conference call Tuesday with 90 CEOs urging them to call their local congressmen, go on television and activate other allied business groups.

"They are going to associations not engaged and saying, 'You need to get engaged,'" Castellani said. "This is not a drill."

Office Depot CEO Steve Odland, a Business Roundtable member, and his team were soon on the phone contacting the Florida offices of local representatives, some of whom had voted against the package Monday.

Though it is one of the biggest global retailers of office equipment, Office Depot could hardly be considered a Wall Street icon. It's headquartered in Delray Beach, Fla., and the vast majority of its customers are small businesses.

Odland has already seen his customers' purchasing power decline as they struggled to get credit. "Our customers are hurting," Odland said he told the House members' senior staff, "and it didn't start two weeks ago."

His primary message: "This has been called a Wall Street bailout, which is totally false. It's a Main Street rescue."

The Chamber aired a radio ad featuring its normally low-profile chief lobbyist, Bruce Josten, and sent an alert to its thousands of members to speak directly to their congressmen while lawmakers were home during the congressional break for Rosh Hashanah.

It also blasted an e-mail appeal to businessmen to send in stories about how they are being affected by the credit crunch, an effort aimed at creating an instant library of real-life vignettes that could be used in conversations on Capitol Hill.

"I have had my line of credit reduced to the point where I have no cash influx in my business," reported Vanessa Baugh, owner of Vanessa Fine Jewelry in Lakewood Ranch, Fla. "No cash influx has made it nearly impossible to buy inventory to get ready for the Christmas season."

Jay Timmons, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, reached out to those of his 11,000 member companies in districts of lawmakers who opposed the bill and urged them to contact their representatives — and have their employees do so, as well.

In his three years at the NAM, Timmons said, "I've never seen a reaction this quickly from our membership."

Van Dongen of the wholesalers group sent alerts to 45,000 member companies to begin calling the local and Capitol Hill offices of their representatives Tuesday night and to keep it up through Wednesday. "We want a tsunami of calls," he said.

The efforts appeared to be paying off Wednesday as the Senate neared a vote on the revised version of the package.

Abby Winter, a spokeswoman for Rep. John B. Shadegg (R-Ariz.), who opposed the package Monday, said "following the vote, there have been more calls in favor than there had been before."

Most notable, Winter said, were a slew of calls coming from American Express officials based in Phoenix.